In ‘July 4 Coup’ at U. of Texas, Flagship’s Chief Is Asked to ResignThe Chronicle of Higher Education

Tensions at the University of Texas are boiling after reports that the system’s chancellor has told the president of the flagship campus, William C. Powers Jr., to resign or risk being fired this week.

Faculty members are planning an emergency meeting for Wednesday, the day before the system’s Board of Regents is scheduled to meet and could vote on Mr. Powers’s dismissal.

Students, employees, and alumni took to social media over the weekend to rally support for the president, and a legislative panel that is pursuing impeachment proceedings against one of his fiercest critics reiterated warnings to the regents not to fire him.

While massive open online courses get a lot of attention, the San Francisco-based organization has received $25 million to test an ambitious blended approach to undergraduate programs.

Minerva founder Ben Nelson says, "We had the luxury to decide what medium to use -- a traditional classroom, an online classroom, or something we built on our own." Nelson's solution was Minerva's custom-designed online platform, which allows students to participate and debate instead of passively observe.

As a result, Nelson says, Minerva can attain its dual pedagogical goals: "curricular choice as well as individualized intellectual development," whereby professors can pass information to each other about individual students' progress and then modify the seminars accordingly.

At the same time, Minerva offers a blended learning atmosphere with its in-person interaction -- although this occurs exclusively among the students, while all the interaction with faculty remains online.

Students Who Push Tech Boundaries Should Be Encouraged, Not PunishedWired

Universities are not always the most welcoming places for student innovation, yet so many of the biggest tech success stories got their start on college campuses.

As institutions that are home to cutting-edge developers of technology, universities have a responsibility to be more responsive to the needs of student innovators and researchers. It is time to get reform underway, fast.

The gradual decline of the PC industry, spurred on by the rapid rise of mobile computing, continues apace.
Today the analysts at Gartner have published their latest forecasts for global PC, tablet, “ultramobile” and mobile phone shipments: they are set to break 2.4 billion units, and nearly 88 percent of that number will be attributable to mobile phones and tablets — specifically devices built on Google’s Android operating system, which on their own will account for nearly 1.2 billion devices.

But while many argue that tablets will become “the new PC,” we’re not yet at the point where tablets are outnumbering PC sales on their own.

When students use software as part of the learning process, whether in online or blended courses or doing their own research, they generate massive amounts of data.

Scholars are running large-scale experiments using this data to improve teaching; to help students stay motivated and succeed in college; and even to learn more about the brain and the process of learning itself.

So academics are scrambling to come up with rules and procedures for gathering and using student data—and manipulating student behavior.

New Initiative to Provide all Students Access to Great EducatorsUS Department of Education

As part of its efforts to ensure that all students have equal access to a quality education, today the U.S. Department of Education is announcing the launch of the Excellent Educators for All Initiative.

The initiative will help states and school districts support great educators for the students who need them most. The three-part Excellent Educators for All Initiative includes: Comprehensive Educator Equity Plans; Educator Equity Support Network; and Educator Equity Profiles

The Anti-Thiel Fellowship: $100,000 To Students Who Stay In School And Work On Their IdeasFast Company

Every year, Peter Thiel offers a select group of entrepreneurial college students $100,000 and the promise of mentorship to quit school and work on their passion projects.

Michael Baum, a serial entrepreneur who most recently founded the big data company Splunk, does the opposite: He offers teams of student entrepreneurs $100,000 and mentorship to work on their dream projects--while still staying in school.

This Settles The 'Robots Will Take Our Jobs' Argument Once And For AllBusiness Insider

It's a common dystopian sci-fi trope: the robots get better at various tasks, the humans become useless, and suddenly the world's population is unemployed (or dead) as the robots take our jobs and everything is terrible.

But this simply won't happen, according to several robotics wonks and investors.